The Second Countess
by etherealfire
Summary: Verona, deep in a world of sorrow at the death of her mother, is the perfect bride for one who has lost everything. Sorry I really suck at summaries except to make them cheesy...but this isn't, I promise. :D
1. The morning

K...found this on my computer, it was a little blurb that I've turned into a story. R and R:D

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It is the spring, and the fields are cold beneath her bare feet in the early morning. She races across the expanse, feet gliding above the many-colored soft glitter of the dew. The shadows swirl around her, vague lifeless fingers from beyond this world, lightly tracing her image in the mist.

It is a long way to the river bank. At its edge, she finds that the hem of her lovely dress has been soaked. Ruined. She frowns, brushes a hand across the soft fabric. This is not what she came for. The river is so dark, so cold.

She lowers herself slowly to the grass, feeling the water soaking greedily into her skirt. She tilts her head slowly to the new dawn sky. The clouds are spare this morning, and the air is so still, too still. The trees pierce the sky with their dead driftwood branches. Fans with pink and gold.

The grass ends a few feet away, and she traces the dust with her fingers. One stone. It sits, imperturbable, near her feet. She reaches out to it. It fits in her hand well save for one sharp edge. Sighing, she tosses it into the water. The ripples spread slowly, lapping at the damp bank and making the dead leaves bob gently up and down.

The water is dark, the color of slate, but it is clear and has a surface like a shining mirror, changing like sliding silk as the ripples undulate across it. She leans over and watches her reflection wavering on the surface, a flat portrayal of dark eyes and tangles of deep ebony hair.

A shaft of light has broken through the morning mist, dancing around her and gilding her face with shimmering golden streaks that begin at her eyes and trickle slowly downward.

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Should I continue? Please please review! And thank you SO MUCH for the wonderful reviews on The Only Thing He Ever Swore:) hugs to all!

etherealfire


	2. Illegitimate

K...sorry it took so long to update...yeah writer's block (even though I know the whole plot already!)_

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_I am alone._

_No one can hear my tears, my weeping. My mother is gone. My father..._

Verona buried her face in her pillow, tears streaming down her face. _My father..._

She had found the letters, tucked away in her mother's vanity, the day of the funeral. The young woman set them aside on the canopy bed, a small packet wrapped in pink lace, so unlike her calm, austere mother that she tossed them aside without much thought. Probably something from a friend, she reasoned, and went on looking for the jewelry that she suspected the maids had already found.

There it was—the necklace, with its jewel of shimmering, endless aqua, which had graced her mother's neck every day of her life. Verona had often played with it as a small child; seated on her mother's lap, she would pull at it until Lady Elisabet gently took it out of her daughter's chubby fingers, smiling. "This is my teardrop," she would say, with a note of sadness in her voice that always made Verona look up into her mother's startling blue-green eyes, nearly the same color as the necklace. She used to think that it really was a teardrop, all the tears in the world falling from her mother's eyes, for she had never seen her mother cry.

The Lady Elisabet was gone now, dead of the fever that had struck Budapest without warning and carried off several members of the household only days before Verona's twenty-third birthday. Her suitor, too, was dead; the news had arrived yesterday. She did not feel too much remorse—Rolf, after all, had a reputation as a womanizer and a mean drunk—but with his death flew her last chance making a place for herself in society. Her father—she had never known him. Elisabet's eyes would fill with a mixture of fury and sadness whenever _he_ was mentioned, the dashing young lord from London-town who had married her mother and then left her when the blond-and-blue-eyed couple's first child was born with raven hair and eyes.

_Illegitimate..._

Her mother had been faithful! Had the fool not known that his new bride's grandmother was Italian, of Sicilian descent? Did he not realize that resemblance skipped generations? No, he had assumed...and he had left them with nothing. Verona pounded her delicate hands into the pillow, releasing her rage at the father she had never even met. _Damn him..._

Now that Rolf was dead...

He was her one chance at being accepted again into society. At least in Budapest no one knew her whole story; her mother had told everyone that her husband had died in a hunting accident while in England. No one knew, or so she thought, until the day she learned that Rolf knew everything, but was willing to take her because of her great beauty. Wasn't that enough? To be bound for life to _him_? Now her mother was gone and even the least appealing way out was buried in the great churchyard at the edge of the city.

She fastened the "teardrop" around her neck and felt her own tears drying slowly. The letters...Verona picked them up and opened the first one.

_Madame Elisabet,_

_I am dissolving our marriage. You have proved to be unfaithful and..._The rest of the letter had been charred, then carefully put back together. Verona flung it aside. The other letters were in the same careful hand. She was putting them back in the drawer when one fell to the ground.

Verona picked it up, curious. It was in a different hand, more regal, and was addressed in a very formal style. She opened it carefully, noting with some surprise that the envelope was still sealed, though it looked to be many years old.

_Dear Madame,_

_It is with deepest regret that I must inform you of the death of your cousin..._

There was a sound in the hallway, and Verona looked up, setting the letter aside. On impulse she glanced back down at the signature: _Gabriel Van Helsing._ The name meant nothing to her. She set the letter back in the drawer as a maid entered her room, looking quite flustered.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, Lady, but you have a visitor."

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Please review!

etherealfire


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